I have been very jealous since “Project ManCave”.

Project ManCave was where we took a nasty, grubby little bedroom full of boxes of Ben’s toys and general Geekery…

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…redecorated, replaced the carpet (due to a leaking radiator incident)…

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and created the perfect Gaming Geek room with shelving for games and a handknitted Sackboy...

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Great for Ben…..What about ME??!!

For the last year, my Knitterly possessions have languished like this…

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In an equally horrible environment in need of some love….

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Time to create the Knit-Room Which also has to double as a guest room.  If you know me, you’ll know that being invited to share a room with my precious stash is indeed an honour. (It’s share with the stash or endure a night with Ben’s beautifully hand painted Games Workshop miniatures of Orcs, Trolls and monsters staring down at you all night!)

Hmmm….
……. Not sure about that name…”Knittery”? Yarnarium? Any better ideas out there for the Knit-Room??

All my “still packed up from the house move” yarn, books and equipment has been moved to another room while the Knit-Room was scrubbed, prepared and painted plain white.

Nothing too difficult or heartbreaking, huh?….

Painting done, we decided to whip the carpet cleaner over the carpet….

Oh Dear.

Once the carpet was moistened, we were aware that there were several patches of ancient cat wee on the carpet. ICK, ICK EWWW! (Definitely not Thug and Mewsley’s work!!)

After trying every trick on the internet to get rid of the smell (and actually making it much worse), it was obvious that  no yarn could be stored in the stinky room and we certainly couldn’t ask a guest to sleep in there – it was revolting.

One carpet, rapidly on the way to the dump.

I now have a clean, fragrant but rather empty room.

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While waiting for the replacement carpet I have spent many happy hours planning the room layout so it can accommodate a sofa bed for me to sit and knit on (and maybe a guest to use), yarn storage, knit book storage and “other crafty things” storage.

Good old IKEA even had some inspiration for me in one of their Business catalogues…

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(Click the picture to see it larger – that really is wool in the shelves and needles and yarn in vases as ornaments!! )

Hmmmm, looks pretty but the yarn would get dusty and moths would love it…My yarn needs doors! (And rather a lot of plastic bags )

So I have decided on this layout….

From Knit-Room

Beddinge (sofabed) and one wardrobe I already had, Billy is a bookcase and Norden is a gateleg table. I think you can guess who the ginger one is!

Nice Mr Ikea delivers tomorrow…the suspense is killing me…watch this space

I’ve finished Ben’s Second Chance Hat.. See here for the reason for that name!

I made particularly quick progress returning from Bristol on the train – for all the wrong reasons….

Happily head down and knitting – I looked up and didn’t recognise the next station…

“This train is going to London Paddington isn’t it?” I ask the nice lady next to me,

“No dear – Leeds.”

There was much despairing, waiting on cold windy platforms for cross country connections, slow chuggy local trains and a very late night home. The only good thing to come out of it was that I had Ben’s just started hat with me!

I got home with a large part of the boring rib finished – Ben was “delighted” to model it for me…he especially liked the Knitpro deely boppers!

From Ben Hat

I finished the hat quite quickly on a couple of (correct) journey’s into London. The decreases were fun “Knit, Knit, Pass knit stitch over” (makes a bulkier decrease than S1K1PSSO).

But the finished hat was….was…”pointy”…

From Ben Hat

Ben was understandably reluctant to look like a pixie so a serious session of blocking over a 2 pint pyrex bowl quickly followed…

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All tucked in tight….

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This really gave me a chance to admire the twisting pattern..

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Now considerably less pointy – Ben agreed to model his hat for a final photo…
Side View…

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And full frontal!

From Ben Hat

God help him if he looses this one!

I’m weak.

I admit it.

I struggle with my well documented Cracksilk Haze addiction …

When I did my Kidsilk Haze workshop, Sarah Hazell, the tutor, mentioned to me that there was an unreleased shade of KSH available for Jannettes Rare Yarns…

I was good and didn’t rush home and buy it….

Unfortunately, the exact page cames up in a google search for something else and I fell off the wagon.

I need rehab….

I had to have 2 balls of Daffodil

It came today and is so pretty! Exactly the colour of spring daffodils

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I promise I’ll try to resist further temptation….I can control myself…I can stop anytime I want….

I took a whole day off work last week, met up with 4 of the Guilty Knitters (Hello to Mel, Judie, Glaucia and Jeni ) and had a great day out at the Alexandra Palace Knitting and Stitching Show. (Or Ally Pally to anyone from this corner of the Globe)

We battled against signal failures on the trains (my 20 min journey took 1 hour and 10 mins!!) tube disruption (took  buses) and monstrously long queues for the courtesy bus (took the local bus) but still managed to arrive wound up, excited and yarn hungry. And in need of a loo and a coffee, strictly in that order.

Did I buy huge amounts of stuff? No!!

We are currently decorating and furnishing my new knit-room (more on that in another post ) and I have to face the fact that my stash is way too large and contains too much yarn that I “snapped up because it was a bargain”  – Kid Silk Haze is excluded from this statement of course. When you start looking at how many wardrobes you need to house yarn it’s hard to ignore the “problem”…

So the idea of the day was to have a fun day out with friend (TICK!), forget about work for the day (half a TICK - got phoned a couple of times), look at all the pretty and be inspired (BIG TICK - lots of beautiful sewing and quilting this year too ) and maybe buy some quality yarn NOT quantity.

Wanna see how that worked out??

First I bought some Frilly novelty “Can Can” yarn! Definitely not “Quality” but I can’t resist a bit of fun and I think my Mum will enjoy a play too…

From Ally Pally 2010

It’s supposed to turn out like this…

From Ally Pally 2010

Then I spent a long time at the Jamieson‘s stand “Ohhing and Ahhing” over this book of Felted Handbags (Which I bought)…

From Ally Pally 2010

I was all set to start a yarn buying frenzy to make one or more of the bags when my good friend Judie stopped me,

” Are you going to start it right away? No.”
” Is the yarn the same price online and quickly and easily delivered when you need it? Yes.”
“Do you want to be carrying that yarn around all day? No.”

Thank you Judie for saving me from yarn purchases with your inescapable logic! (I suspect she is related to Mr Spock somewhere along the line…)

I did buy a small kit from Jamieson’s though – this was adorable and irresistible although I rarely drink tea and don’t remember the last time I used a tea pot!

From Ally Pally 2010

I spent a happy 40 mins trying to choose what colours to make the tea pot cosy! This should nicely hone my fairisle skills and, for the handle and spout, introduce me to the most scary word in knitting … STEEK!

Lastly, I couldn’t leave without one over indulgent purchase. I hadn’t spent very much of the budget I had saved up all year so I felt justified…
“Quality not Quantity” was the day’s mantra…..

I got this – Buffalo Gold!

From Ally Pally 2010

It’s 100% bison down from the winter undercoat – Apparently the fibres are smooth and don’t have the scales of sheep’s wool so it won’t felt and it’s very strong making it great for gloves that can be machine washed and generally abused….They even had machine knit pairs there for fishermen!

Read all about it…

From Ally Pally 2010

How much? A stupidly expensive £50 for one skein – but that was my reward for not going crazyand buying packs of half price Rowan!

I was disappointed by the bag they gave me the yarn in though – a thin poly bag which made my luxurious purchase look uncomfortable like I had just walked the dog and picked up the droppings!

From Ally Pally 2010

Yarns firmly under control, I was whizzing along with Flag and getting through the rows on the chart very quickly – too quickly – alarmingly quickly…..

Bugger!

I had managed to misread this very large, clear instruction at the top of the chart (I’m doing size “S”)…

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I read one square as “4 stitches and 4 rows” not “4 stitches and 8 rows” (4 garters).  I really am getting to be a very silly, careless knitter who would have ended up with a rather stunted garment

It wasn’t entirely a bad thing though – I wasn’t happy with that “quick”  Thumb cast on – it looked sloppy.

And I hadn’t quite mastered the weaving in of yarn when the colour travels to right (all described on Helen’s tutorials) and I had left too long floats

See what I mean??

From Flag

It did give me a sneak preview of how it was turning out though

From Flag

Nothing for it but to treat it as a learning experience and start again….

Properly… with a neat “long tail cast on”…

paying attention to the pattern instructions!

A much better cast on edge this time…

From Flag

And I’m getting those floats nicely under control – in fact the wrong side is looking pretty neat and tidy now…

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I’m really glad I started again – It’s all much improved

I had one little hiccup with my yarn box – I had only made 12 slots for yarn balls and after a few rows I needs number 13.

I thought I had found a practical and innovative solution to my “one more ball” problem. Ben, of course, expressed incredulous amusement  -in the form of pointing and laughing! Hurumpf… Surely a loo roll centre isn’t  that funny ?

From Flag

So you must be wondering how far I’ve got?

I could tease you and say I’ve just done the provisional stitches that mark where the arm holes go at the top of the horizontal red srtipe…

From Flag

But really this is the picture you’re waiting to see – slipped onto a spare circular for the photo shoot…

..Half way there!

From Flag